In a recent discussion with a group of some business friends, one of them disdainfully remarked, “Oh, he’s just a wannabe.”
At first I was inclined to agree with my friend, who was implying that there was something less than praiseworthy about being a wannabe, about being someone with a dream rather than someone like us in our little group who have started and owned successful businesses. And to be honest, we are all pretty smug about that. Then it occurred to me that shortly before I started my business, I, too, was a wannabe.
When I look at it in that retrospective light, I am forced to revise my view of wannabes. These are people with a dream, and what’s wrong with that? Shouldn’t we be praising our dreamers? The people who aspire to greater things? The people who are inspired to change the status quo? Weren’t Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, George Eastman (Kodak), Sergey Brin, Larry Page and Mark Zuckerberg wannabes at one time in their careers? These were the people who were not satisfied with continuing to do things “the way we’ve always done it.”
Now I say, “Hurray for the wannabes. They are the people who change our lives and make things easier, better and cheaper for us.”
Continuing with the thought about being unsatisfied with the status quo, I am reminded of the numerous times in my career when I was hired to take over as the manager of a company that was failing or not doing too well. It was my job to come in and turn it around, if possible — and as quickly as possible.
One of the first things I would do would be to do nothing at all. Let me explain. For the first two weeks I would do nothing more than walk around the company drinking coffee, observing and talking to the employees. (You’d be amazed what you can learn by doing that!)
I would ask them such questions as, “How long have you been with the company?” “How do you like it here?” “What do you like about your job?” “What changes would you like to see the company make — and why?”
The last two questions I would frequently ask were, “What is it that you’re doing?” and “Why are you doing it that way?”
All too frequently the answer would be something like, “Well, we’ve always done it this way.” An answer like that indicated to me that the employee didn’t really understand the reason for what he was doing, so I would then make a mental note to look into that particular step in the production process. I would often find that it could be either combined with another step or be eliminated. So being unsatisfied with the status quo, “the way we’ve always done it,” often resulted in an improvement of the total system.
So now I say, “It’s OK to be unsatisfied with the way things are, and it’s OK to wannabe a wannabe.”
— Paul Burri is an entrepreneur, inventor, columnist, engineer and iconoclast. He is not in the advertising business, but he is a small-business counselor with the Santa Barbara chapter of Counselors to America’s Small Business-SCORE. The opinions and comments in this column are his alone and do not represent the opinions or policies of any outside organization. He can be reached at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
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